Honolulu Community College students win national PISCES lunar outpost student design competition

HONOLULU — The Honolulu Community College (HCC) Lunar Habitat Student Design Competition team has been named "overall winner" of the national Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES) Lunar Outpost Student Design Competition. The event was part of PISCES‘ first ever conference held last week in Hilo.

"For our students to win a national competition such as this truly shows that not only HCC students, but all community college students can compete at any level," said HCC Chancellor Ramsey Pederson.

HCC, the only community college in the competition, bested teams from schools such as Purdue University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Colorado, after being selected as a finalist for the competition that charges students to design a habitat capable of sustaining human life on the moon. HCC‘s entry featured four interconnected spheres that formed a habitat with a unit for sleeping, command, biomass production and community activities.

PISCES, which is dedicated to developing technologies to allow human life to thrive on the moon and other planets in the future, is housed at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo and is a partnership between the State of Hawaiʻi, various international space programs, global industry and academia.

For more information, contact Doug Madden, primary faculty advisor for the PISCES team, at (808) 845-9409 or doug@hcc.hawaii.edu.